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It'll be 35 years on April 30th since Saigon fell to the Communists. The war defined an era and a whole generation and in many ways it's shadow has hung over our foreign policy--And some have compared our situations in Iraq and Afghanistan to Vietnam, though the comparison is debatable. Who can we blame for the loss of Vietnam--LBJ? Nixon? Gerald Ford? The Congress? The Generals? Henry Kissinger? McNamara? The Anti-War protestors? The troops? Or America itself?
What's your opinion--Who do you think 'lost' Vietnam and what do you think looking back could've enabled us to win the war--or if not 'win' the war, at least keep S. Vietnam an intact non-communist state?
I ask because...The shadow does still loom and maybe we can learn from Vietnam, and perhaps what we learn from the mistakes made could help us to win now. It'd have made the sacrifice of the 58,000 who died to not have been in vain--that the loss of their lives then could save the lives of others now--along with the hundreds of thousands or millions who died after the Fall.

Why does it seem like all of the threads started by caughtinthemiddle are homework assignments? And if you want to point fingers, I vote Walter Cronkite.

They aren't homework assignments, simply stuff I like talking about. I'm one of those thinking types--I think it'd be funnier to talk about such things than ''let's bash Libs/Conservatives/Libertarians today and argue over whose ideology is better''
Vietnam was the most important conflict in modern history (at least for us in America), and it still does effect foreign policy and seeing as the anniversary of it's end looms I figured we could discuss it and maybe..idk..learn something from it.
And yes, Walter was an SOB. He purposefully undermined the war effort and morale. I think there's a quote by LBJ in which upon hearing of Cronkite's broadcast felt that now ''middle America'' or his base would turn against the war.

I'd argue that the first Gulf war was more important than Vietnam. I mean no disrespect to the men and women who sacrificed so much during Vietnam. But if we had never sent advisers, or troops into Vietnam I'm not so sure that we would have seen the domino effect that was feared. On the other hand, allowing Saddam to take Kuwait and possibly other neighbors, would have had an immediate and profound effect on the U.S..

There are so many reasons and contributing factors to why we failed to keep the Vietcong in the north part of the country. I don't like to say that we lost.

I would say LBJ is more to blame than Nixon, who inherited the situation, at least from the political end of things. I don't think the military was prepared to fight against a loosely-organized army using guerrilla warfare.

The one story I think of is the one my cousin's ex-hubby told us about one of his experiences-he and his unit were patrolling the jungle and they came across a baby carriage with a baby in it. A couple of his buddies went to get the baby, and bring it back to the base, and the carriage exploded, killing the baby and his fellow soldiers. I don't think the soldiers were prepared for that type of situation, not emotionally. The tacticts used by the Vietcong were inconceivable to americans in the 1960s.